Shards of Fog
by ShinigamiForever
Summary: PG cause kids don't get it. Strange top of the moment fic, as always. If you don't have an open mind, don't read it, okay? I know it doesn't have any plot. Um...shounen-ai. Don't like it, don't read it.


Shards of Fog  
By: ShinigamiForever  
  
A/N: Really curious about reactions to this fic. Inspired by the music from Glay's Miki Piano.  
  
  
  
The place smelled like Alka-Seltzer. That clear and intoxicating scent of lemon and carbonation, a bubble in the air, so clean and pure in its human scent. It filled his mouth with the taste of bitterness and orange peel, filling his nose with poignant fumes and wafting scents.  
  
In the air, dust motes floated in the air, accompanied by chalk dust and the vague particles of fabric shreds. The light slanted from the window in a cacophony of yellow and brilliant heat, hitting the desks of students with radiant force that knocked out color and light. The classroom was cool and dry, the windows open to let in the air, but it remained stuffy, like an old library. It was pent up with lectures and boredom and summer heat that seeped in through the small cracks on the walls and vents in the creaks of windows. The chalk dust was stifling, filling the air with bits of white snow, suffocating in its intensity. The light shone in with solid beams, particles of dust flying through the light and reflecting the solidity of the world.  
  
He stared at the chalkboard, half erased. The swipe of the eraser was not clean, the streaks of white and pale green against the whiteness of the chalk. "Il a vu l'ange avec des ailes des couteaux/ dans l'ombre, il ne pourrait pas dire son destin.." The remnents of French class earlier that day, some French poet with his lilting voice streaming through the old creaked one of the wizen French teacher. He did not know French. He didn't understand the poem. But the words with their ever present beauty, strung together like the finite pearls on a single strand. "dans l'ombre..." He knew umbra was shadow. L'ombre, the shadow? Destin, destiny? L'ange, the angel?  
  
Shadows in this room were light. They flitted around the room gently, streaking across the desks that he was washing. The damp cloth, stained with cleaning solution and dirt and pencil marks, still lay clutched in his hand, and he realized the stupidity of the moment, him bent over the desk, in the motion of washing it. The sharp scent of the cleaning solution struck him as nauseating, and he lowered his head, wiping the desk again.  
  
===  
[light- n. 1) the sensation that light stimulates in the organs of sight 2) brightness; illumination, often of a specified kind 3) a source of light, as the sun, a lamp, a light bulb, etc... 3) the light from the sun; daylight or dawn 5) facial expression showing a mental or emotional state]  
===  
  
He watched the other in the room wipe the chalkboard. The perpetual other. The other with eyes of blank shadow, slates of color. A soul, like the pit of a peach when you split it open in your mouth, but not as sweet, no, maybe more sharp. Or sour. He carried the scent of fresh powder and cut grass, the waft of piano music perhaps. Maybe his scent was more the dusty feel of satin and silk. The melody of a music as it flows through your mouth. The perfume of some pressed and wilted flower. Slim, dark, the perfect blend of major and minor key that wove itself out of music. That was the other.   
  
He watched the play of muscle ripple under the afternoon sunlight. Skin, forever tainted with the blood of the sun. Swift was the wipe of the eraser, getting rid of the elegant and wine-flavored French words that soaked into the ripeness of the afternoon. The plum scent of somebody's gum stuck under the table. Bending over, he lost sight of the other washing the board.  
  
Chewed and awkwardly dented, the sticky substance had hardened on the surface. With some difficulty, he pried away at its hold, but in that action, he watched his fingers. Were they his? They seemed to move without him. Some days, he wondered who was in control of his body, if he was not. The slender willow grace of his body was not his. The ultraviolet light of his eyes was not his. The soft flow of hair was not his. Who played that viola music in his ear? Who let him taste the flavor of dust on his tongue? Certainly not him.  
  
===  
[Without plans, we started on a journey.   
Put up a southbound sail to the unmoving soul.   
At this world full of sadness, and on lonely nights,   
all we can do is fall asleep to someone's soft lovesong.   
  
The lips can't express love and lovers lean on loneliness....   
There's no reason to stay here, where even brilliance seems ordinary.   
  
I long to go to someplace else.]  
===  
  
He continued wiping the desk. Letting the automatic movement of his arm carry him away, he watched the other in the room. Done with the eraser, the other moved to washing the board. The sweep of damp cloth that brought a clean green in the fragrant light. The other still had his back turned to him, and he felt the urge to go up and touch that shoulder, just that shoulder, feel the bone and reality in it, perhaps flit his fingers over the neck, just to see if the skin was as smooth as it looked. Maybe go up and brush his fingers over the lips, see if they could do more than just speak, see if perhaps they felt as soft as the skin. And if the other did not resist, he might kiss the young man.  
  
Oh, he was not in love. He just wanted to know how it felt to get close to someone, feel their heartbeat under yours, just as an assassin felt as he places his hand over his prey. To taste what the essence of a person tasted like, liquid and distant. The closest way to get into a person's body is through the mouth. And the heart, of course, but that was emotionally, and he wasn't interested in emotional discomfort.   
  
Being in love was like bleeding to death. Maybe a bit more slow. At least, that's what he believed. So from afar, he watched the other wipe the board, reaching with his arm that could be strong, fingers that could choke and aim guns and perhaps touch softly. What was a person's desire when he saw another human body? It was to go up to touch them, perhaps not out of love or admiration or malice, but just to make sure that people were real, not just images placed inside your eyelids, and that you were alive, not asleep, and your world wasn't made of the pink of your brain.  
  
In the background, the piano was being played by a student. Some distant melody, Chopin perhaps, the brilliance of the waltz like mocking in that silence of the two. The other had not turned around since the beginning.  
  
What beginning? What end? For a moment, he thought he had been washing forever, maybe they were just stuck there, silent and wandering. But as he snapped out of that moment, he thought back and wondered what strange thoughts he felt today. He felt heady and light, above the desk that held specks of pencil. The patterns of the dots and cuts formed lines and maps and words in his head, meaningless words, moon, street, lamp post, brilliance, white, nocturne. Delirious breath racked his lungs, he thought the other could almost hear his breathing.   
  
He felt somewhat disgusted with himself, picking up his cleaning cloth and slapping it into the wastebasket. He banged into something as he walked back, the impact sending small waves of pain down his thigh. He did not cry out or show any reaction, but inside his mind screamed instinctivly. Pain pain pain. Like the shrieking of an ambulance.   
  
There was a glitch in the movement of the other. For a moment, the other stopped, turning around and facing him. A face, like the millions of other faces out there, blendng in seamlessly into the crowd, all curves and edges and angles. The flash of some life force behind that mask, where was the real face of his friend? Where was that? He wanted to touch the glow of that light, not some fake fleshy mound that was a human shell.  
  
"What?" the other asked, a voice like thunder and mist, like soft vibrating whirls and machinery, like the true song of a bird, beautiful opposites wrapped into a rolling voice.  
  
"Nothing," he answered, and he felt his answer come from both within and without him, shedding light on his own emotions. Most people are afraid of nothingness. They pretend it is just the absence of feeling, like apathy. But they are wrong. Nothingness is the sum of all feelings, the origin of all emotions. It is the final stage of human perfection. It is the void in which anything becomes and nothing is destroyed or betrayed.  
  
It is the beginning and the conclusion.  
  
===  
[nothingness- n. 1) the quality or condition of being nothing or not existing, nonexistence or estinction 2) lack of value, worth, meaning, etc.; uselessness, emptiness, insignificance, etc. 3) unconsciousness or death 4) anything that is nonexistent, worthless, insignificant, useless, etc.]  
===  
  
They were done, but looking at the classroom, he wondered what they had done in the first place. The classroom still seemed dusty, a layer of age and time dirt on its surface, but perhaps it was that smooth gait of air that rushed in as they left. The door closed behind them, but he could see the faint crack in the shut. Perhaps, though he thought it was just his overactive imagination, that the classroom was waiting for them to go back. Still, he followed the other down the hallway, the drawing force of his friend stronger than the invitation of the door, the small crack that could return him to light and dust and the smell of boiling water under his nose.  
  
Their footsteps sent crackling gunshots down the empty hallway, lit by the lights of afternnon and fluroscent bulbs above him. Their silence left a void which was filled by the slight buzzing of the lights above their head, an incessent ringing like a headache or migrane. The purr of the electronic kitten that settled for its nighttime nap before the light of day shone it awake.   
  
The door pushed open let the light stream in, pale blue light in fabulous yellow colors. The shadow the sun lit against the ground spread until it touched their feet, like dark waves of endless mirth and joy, beckoning them into its embrace. He counted the seconds before the other took a step.  
  
One...  
  
/Only a sick mind could obsess over one thing.../  
  
Two...  
  
/Two is a lonelier number than one, because there is company, you just can't reach it.../  
  
Three...  
  
/Three's the trick, but three's a company.../  
  
Fou-  
  
"Let's go." That voice again, the commanding yet submitting voice, both passionate and impassioned, both inanimate and vibrant. The tread of a panther was in each syllable, the tick tock of the grandfather clock in the other's eyes. He felt the seconds count upwards, spiralling towards the open massive sky.  
  
/Four is the number of strength and endurance./  
  
===  
[Like a glass masterpiece, the side-effects of being protected all my life become a risk.  
Attacked by the herd of dirty gray mice,  
Every day, people laugh at the "dreams and reality" that I've always believed in.  
  
On the cynical stage, living intelligently by copying others. Sometimes even betraying my own master.  
The cold city and the dangerous playful angels start to recognize the "beautiful lies made with adults"]  
===  
  
They sat on the metro together, but it was not together, never quite together. Today, it was more physically apart, there was an empty chair between them. He fidgeted, slightly uncomfortable with the hard surface beneath him and the space, always the space. They did not speak to one another, the whistling clumps of the train comforting their silence.   
  
Business men with newspapers and mothers with shopping bags and babies cut in between the two, sitting in the empty chair. But the nervous silence seemed to unconciously grab at them, and they left, mercy coming in the form of another empty chair or a friend. It seemed strange, people flitting away from them like children drawing away from the brilliant blooming flames of death. That was the lyrical quality of that afternoon.  
  
He watched the people file out of door, and it caught at him how empty the metallic world of mere existence was. That business man, the one with the wire thin glasses and pale complexion, as well as beige brown suit, what did that man think about? Did he have children? A wife? A nice house and car? What was his purpose in life? But maybe he was only wondered about that because of the empty silence drifting between him and the other.   
  
With slow methodical movements, he turned to look at his companion, the silent unmoving statue beside him, not quite with him.  
  
"When's our stop?" It was a question that lacked purpose, no running basic emotion behind it. What did it mean to him?  
  
"Soon." The answer was equally empty of meaning, equally ambiguous in its shape and taste.  
  
The train stopped, and he followed the other out onto the grey platform of the station, the edges of sunlight fading into fog and light rain.  
  
===  
[I can speak in riddles,  
twist the words of emotions  
(human words)  
around my tongue and taste  
their sharpness  
  
I can sing songs of angels  
Melodies of heaven's  
own  
pretend to be the tongues of bells of gold  
  
I can throw matches   
send flaring bits of   
wood towards my target  
  
I can become truth  
tell memories of lies  
long past  
  
But I will not speak of the wanderings  
of young minds  
Tread softly, I whisper  
Watch the flow of solitude  
around you]  
===  
  
They walked as they had sat on the train, together, but not quite together. The sky was a shade of grey, the color of nondescript bedding and feathers. He watched the other walk in front of him, both of them stepping softly around the mines of silence and eggshells around them, both not speaking. He followed the weaving footsteps of his companion. There was something light and quicksilver about those steps. Even though he lacked the same grace and smoothness, he tried to follow the gait and structure of them.  
  
There seemed to be a trembling in his body. It was not that he shook, but more that his entire body shook so much you couldn't notice it. He felt it in his fingers and his eyes, a shaking and quivering.   
  
He felt the biting fog and rain of the autumn. It was strange, that the fog almost hurt in its intensity. There were stinging drops of moisture on his face and skin. The dampness was evident in his hair, stained and misted by the light raindrops. Everywhere, he was the surroundings and they were him. He felt a little of himself in each leaf and raindrop. In truth, though, what he really wanted to be part of was the sky above him, wide and boundless in its pale and grey vastness.  
  
And also in truth, he didn't know what he would do if he really did become the sky.  
  
===  
[The drops bounce up,  
little fountains  
all around him,  
swift, momentary-  
every drop tossed back  
in air atop  
its tiny column-  
glass balls balancing  
upon glass nipples,  
lace of dimples,  
a stubble of silver  
stars, eye-level,  
incessant, wild...]  
===  
  
Sometimes, at night, he dreamed of rain and fog. He dreamed of him and the other walking through it all, tasting the wetness on their skin and tongue. The sun was a faint yellow light above them, and the rain was their bond. He dreamed of their innocence and of their fragility, how much they wanted to keep it. He dreamed of the raw bond of trust and friendship that he knew would somehow be severed.  
  
On those nights, he woke up with his pillow damp.  
  
Some nights, he would ghost down the hallway to his partner's room. He knew when he opened the door how the other would be sleeping. The other young man would have his back turned to the door, sleeping on his right side, one arm under the pillow, almost hugging it, and the other hanging loosely over his chest. He knew the other never fell asleep totally.  
  
He would then crawl into the covers on the left side of the other, slide between the sheets and sleep there for the night. They never mentioned anything in the morning. Sometimes, he would gather as close as he dared with touching, letting the warmth wash over him, close yet too far away, the tiny gap between them the sum of all ravines. The dark would close in on them, and none of them slept.  
  
Sometimes, he would line up his body against the other until he was inseparable. There was almost no gap, and he would lay his forehead on the other's neck, soaking the breath and sleeping sounds. On those nights, he slept. But the other did not.  
  
Some nights, the other young man would turn around and hold him close to his own chest. They entwined their limbs together, letting their breaths fall into rhythm together, until they were both one soul souring over endless dreams. They felt their combined warmth and comfort, and invisible threads of some fleeting emotion wrapped their wrists together.  
  
On those nights, they both slept.  
  
==  
owari  
=== 


End file.
